| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 音樂學系在職進修碩士班 === 98 === Morten Lauridsen, born in 1943, is a famous contemporary composer in America. His choral music has become popular all around the world. His choral cycle Les Chansons des Roses was commissioned and premiered in 1993 by Choral Cross-Ties of Portland, the composer’s hometown. At first the choir director commissioned an encore piece only; however, Lauridsen decided to write five short songs of roses after he read Rainer Maria Rilke’s French Poems Les Roses.
Les Chanson des Roses is a choral setting contains five pieces written in French. First is En Une Seule Fleur which acclaims the variety of roses. Second is Contre Qui, Rose, it expresses the passion ask for why the rose has its thorn to hurt people? Third is De Ton Rêve Trop Plein which describing the charming figure of roses. Fourth is the La Rose Complète describing poet who treated himself as a perfect friend of a perfect rose. The final one is Dirait-on, by means of a Greek myth about a pathologically self-absorbed young man who implies narcissism of roses.
In the En Une Seule Fleur, The homophonic texture is used to describe rose’s beauty in the first section and recapitulation; the middle section of the song is canon texture to describe rose’s blossom. In the Contre Qui, Rose, there are full of half-cadence throughout the piece which represents unanswered questions in the text. In the De Ton Rêve Trop Plein, the music language is mixed with modality and tonality and the pair imitation showing the echo effect. In the La Rose Complète, a long and lyric melody line alternates in different voice parts and the others support with various harmonies. The final Dirait-on is the “theme and variation”, which combines the melody in French chanson style and piano accompaniment imitating the chord-playing on a guitar. This piece becomes the most popular one of Les Chansons des Roses.
This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One is the introduction, which includes the motive and intention of this research, the biography of Lauridsen, and the biography of Rilke. Chapter Two presents the musical analyses of Les Chansons des Roses. Chapter Three focuses on the musical interpretation and suggests pedagogical methods of these five songs. The last chapter is the conclusion which summarizes the creative features and aesthetical values of this choral cycle. There are five appendixes as following; the French pronunciation guide, the Chinese translations of the lyrics (word-for-word as well as poetic translations), the word-for-word pronunciations of the texts, Lauridsen’s compositional list, and finally two replied emails from the composer.
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